James 4:10 (ESV) … “Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you.”
The duty of submitting ourselves to God. This submission has its commencement and abiding root in the reception of Christ as a Savior.
The natural heart rebels against a gratuitous justification, against the renunciation of every personal claim, and the acceptance of a salvation for which we are wholly indebted to the mercy of God and the merit of Jesus.
It cannot brook the humiliation of taking all as a free gift—of standing on what is not our own, but another’s, and of having nothing to boast of, nothing to glory in, but that despised object, the Cross. When we receive Him as the end of the law for righteousness, the old, proud, stubborn spirit yields, is dispossessed, and a new, meek, compliant one succeeds. The surrender thus made is not a temporary or an isolated thing; no, it is both permanent and productive—it abides and fructifies. It leads to a lasting and unlimited submission.[1]
[1] Exell, J. S. (n.d.). The Biblical Illustrator: James (pp. 369–370). Cincinnati; Chicago; Kansas City: Jennings & Graham.
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